


the way to you

by OccasionallyCreative



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon Compliant, F/M, Grief/Mourning, Happy Ending, No Pregnancy, Post-Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, Resurrection, Sacrifice
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-16
Updated: 2020-03-16
Packaged: 2021-03-01 01:40:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,449
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23157217
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OccasionallyCreative/pseuds/OccasionallyCreative
Summary: After receiving a vision in the Force while living on Tatooine, Rey sets out on a journey to right the galaxy's wrong, and bring back Ben Solo.
Relationships: Kylo Ren/Rey, Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Comments: 5
Kudos: 55
Collections: Reylo Charity Anthology: Volume 2





	the way to you

**Author's Note:**

> This was written for the Reylo Charity Anthology, Volume 2. This was my first time contributing, and I'm so thankful for getting the chance to both to contribute to something worthwhile and work through my feelings about Rey and Ben post-TRoS. Hope you enjoy ❤️

*** * ***

_Belief brings me close to you,_

_but only to the door._

_It is only by disappearing into_

_your mystery_

_that I will come in._

Hakim Sanai

*** * ***

It is nightfall by the time Rey reaches the town of Mos Eisley. The market stalls are quiet, doors and windows shutting out the evening. It’s just her walking through the silent chaos, underneath Tatooine’s stars.

The trek to Mos Eisley had taken her three days on foot. She’s turned her back on the twin suns. She knew that she would not be able to explain why to any passer-by.

For a year, she has watched the two suns rise and set. For a year, like the routines she’d established on Jakku, she has called out to the Force.

_Why did you bring me here?_ _What can I learn here?_

She’s devoted herself to the Force after seeing— _him_ , die. (It still doesn’t feel right despite her attempts to understand it, to put those words together.)

The Force had held onto her. It had let him climb from the depths and reach her, kept her in this world so he could pour his soul into hers. When she woke, she had found his eyes, his unscarred face. She’d thought it was over. Cradled his cheek, her thumb tracing the line of his jaw. They could be together now, they could—

He was so human. The sound his skull made as it fell to the ground with a crack, sickeningly so.

The wound opened the moment he faded. A wound without a cure, that deepened slowly, day by day. Ben Solo had been a part of her soul.

So why had the Force left him? So quickly, barely leaving her time to register it. To _grieve_ it. 

Time. 

All these years, that was all she’d wanted.

Time to know her parents, why they abandoned her, to heal the scars of battles lost.

She’d looked at Ben Solo’s smile and thought she had so much of it.

There were questions she had, too many of them to turn away from the path. So, she followed it, and Tatooine was her answer. She buried the sabers, and Leia and Luke looked on her with a smile.

“Rey Skywalker,” she gave as her answer to that stranger, but the taste of the name still feels foreign on her tongue. At that moment, she’d just wanted someone to _know_. Though Leia was gone, though Luke was gone... the Skywalkers had saved the galaxy.

Their descendant had turned from the Dark to save her. Defied his destiny to bring her back.

A year she has let pass by here. In her hut, she has forged her routines. She has woken in the morning to hunt rats and boars and has kept the Lars homestead safe from raiders. She has worked with the moisture vaporators during the day, and she has crawled into her bed, her muscles sore and aching, after watching the suns disappear below the horizon.

It has always been so easy to form routines. On Jakku she formed the routines to work and pretend she was suited to isolation. It took rescuing a droid to help her realise that.

On Tatooine, though, she knew why she worked. She wanted to pretend that the Force wasn’t just simply toying with her.

When the monster began to come to her in her dreams, cackling and peeling back the truth of her blood, she awoke in her hut sweating and gasping, clamouring for the only thing that anchored her. A black jumper she had stowed on Luke’s X-wing and feels for now in her satchel as she walks through Tatooine’s empty streets.

The heat and sand of Tatooine linger on it, but somehow, he’s still there. His scent, his _presence_ , is threaded into the knit. It made her laugh, bitterly, that the one who brought her from death is preserved in a bit of black wool.

When the dream came again, an inner chill always rattled her bones and woke her again. 

Palpatine. 

It was a name that felt as foreign as Skywalker when she rolled it around her head. 

She tried once, to say it aloud. Thinking maybe she could reclaim it, and work to erase the hatred of her grandfather and instead fill it with love. Heal the wound he had ripped into it. 

Myth is often more powerful than action, though, and saying her grandfather’s name aloud only made the nightmares worse.

Rey Skywalker delayed them a little while.

As she gets closer to the cantina, she encounters the dredges of life. Drunks slouched in the sand; backhand deals arranged by figures drenched in shadow.

Inside, the smoke is a thick musk that makes her eyes water. Lowlifes and visiting aliens with parts packed into their sacks eye her. When they see no valuables but the saber clipped to her belt, they leave well enough alone. 

This cantina still talks of the old stranger who spoke softly but wielded a laser sword with lethal precision. _Old Ben_ , she’s heard them say. _You never wanted to get on the wrong side of him_.

Rey only smiles a true smile when she approaches the two strangers at a table in the corner. They have their heads together, talking in low voices.

Rose is the first one to notice her, and she waves. Her friendliness, her brightness, is completely out of place in Mos Eisley and Rey can’t help but laugh. She feels her eyes growing wet with happy tears as Rose pulls her into a tight hug.

“It’s been too long,” she says. Rey nods in agreement, quickly wiping her eyes.

Chewie greets her with a cheerful growl, drawing her into a hug as well. Some figures sitting in the shadows recognise the tall Wookiee. They keep their attention firmly fixed on their drinks.

“ _You ran away from us_ ,” Chewie remarks, in short, blunt growls. But his eyes are kind enough that she knows it isn’t an accusation. Just an observation.

“Finn was surprised to get your communication,” Rose continues. “We all were.”

“I always planned to here as long as the Force needed me to be,” Rey explains, already lying. It was too difficult to explain exactly why she had packed her things and sent a communication to the Resistance asking for transport off Tatooine.

She couldn’t explain to them her connection to Ben. How do you explain that someone is one half of your soul? That when they die, a part of you dies with it? The wound she carries is more than mere grief. It is death itself, clinging like perfume.

But Rose is satisfied with her explanation and asks for nothing more. The way she pulls Rey into a second hug, longer and warmer than the first, makes Rey think she sees the truth in her eyes. 

If the others were here, would they see through her lie as easily? She’s been away too long to know.

“Finn wanted to come, but more Stormtroopers are coming out of the woodwork since the First Order fell. They want to find their families. His and Jannah’s story has become something of a legend among their ranks. Now they want to know how they did it.”

“He’ll put it down to the Force,” Rey says too bluntly and Rose grimaces. Rey feels her face go hot with embarrassment. She’s been too alone for too long.

“He doesn’t. Not anymore. He and Jannah realised it wasn’t just the Force that made them defect when the first strays arrived on the Resistance base and knew nothing about it when asked. I don’t think the First Order ever thought that children can miss families they’ve never known.”

Those tallies she’d scratched into the walls of her home on Jakku. All building to the moment she’d be reunited with her family. Instead, evil laughed and told her he was her blood. Her parents were cowards, after all, thinking it was brave to sell her. Rey shudders, swallowing the memory of Palpatine’s face with a small smile that doesn’t reach her eyes.

“Sorry,” Rose apologises quickly, possibly not quite for the right thing. It means something though, and Rey feels her smile become genuine.

“It’s okay.”

“ _Enough talk about sad things_ ,” growls Chewie. “ _The galaxy has hope now. Let’s get out of here._ ”

Rose sighs, relieved.

“Good idea. Let’s go.”

*** * ***

The Resistance is far away from the spark it was during the war. The spark burns bright now, hope blazing through the crowds of commanders, officers and former Stormtroopers. The members of the Resistance, now forming into the New Republic, hurry and bustle to play their parts. The Stormtroopers mostly keep themselves to themselves as they slowly relearn and break free from programming, from unquestioned obedience. Finn and Jannah work together to help them, giving them activities that make them think independently and encourage questions.

“No, my head isn’t suited for politics,” Poe says with a playful smile as he continues his tour of the New Republic’s headquarters. They’ve entered the hangar. His X-wing, battered from battle, is being upgraded by a team of engineers. BB-8 beeps helpfully at them, passing tools. “Leia was right. My head’s always going to be in the cockpit.”

“Is that a bad thing?”

“Not right now,” Poe says, heading down the corridor and beckoning for Rey to follow him. “There’s still some out there loyal to the First Order who want a war.”

“So who’s running things?” Rey asks as they walk together into the command centre.

“D’Acy is settling in well,” is Poe’s answer, his smile widening as D’Acy turns to face him. Her wife, a pilot, is beside her with pride bright in her face as she watches the new commander greet Rey with a shake of the hand.

“Rey, it’s wonderful to have you back. Make yourself comfortable, feel free to ask for whatever you need. We can afford a few luxuries now,” she says. D’Acy has some of Leia in her. Her warmth, her steely resolve. She speaks gently, wearing the same clothes as her officers. Rey studies the new commander for a moment. She has the hope that the New Republic needs.

An heir to Leia’s legacy.

For the first time since arriving, Rey begins to relax.

“C’mon.” Poe pats Rey’s arm. “I’ll take you to Finn.”

“That’d be great.”

Finn jumps to his feet as soon as Rey comes through the door of his quarters. She sees trinkets of Rose’s alongside his.

“Rey!” She opens her arms and lets him lift her feet off the floor in a tight hug. “We all missed you so much. You won’t believe the stuff that’s been happening while you’ve been gone.”

Rey shrugs. “I don’t know. I hear you’ve become quite the tutor.”

Finn bows his head, blushing slightly. “I thought it was a Force thing… but…”

“You deserve it, Finn. Even without the Force, you did something amazing.”

“I’m realising that,” Finn replies, voice soft. “Jannah’s been surprised by it too.”

“Where is she?”

“Out riding with some of them. She takes them riding over the hills when they suffer the nightmares. Part of the deprogramming process.”

_He’s not a Jedi, but he’s helping people_ , Rey thought. _Like I’m supposed to._

“And, you and Rose…” she says, glancing towards Rose’s blaster sitting on Finn’s desk, her clothes strewn on his chair. Finn blushes briefly.

“We, uh, sat down together. Talked it out. We’re good now. Really good,” Finn adds, struggling to hide his happiness.

He’s got it sorted. His future mapped out.

Guilt and doubt hits Rey in a wave that dizzies her.

“I’ll see if Rose backs you up on that,” she jokes, hugging Finn again before she quickly darts out of the room, leaving Poe and Finn behind.

She knows what she must do. It’s a call in the Force, from deep within her core that pulls her down this path. But seeing how the New Republic is forming, seeing the healing… She rushes to a refresher and sticks her head down the toilet, heaving until her throat is raw.

Alone there, she cries, tears streaking down her face. She hugs herself. This is how the wound bleeds. Hours, days, months, she can go without shedding a tear. 

The smallest thought slips through the cracks and her armour falls apart until she has the strength to piece it back together again.

But the calm won’t come. She fumbles for her sack. Grabs the black sweater with a hole in it. She hugs it like it is a part of herself.

The Force is like electricity, sparking off it.

The Wellspring. She sees the memory of it in her mind’s eye, the thing that had come to her in the middle of the night, flooding her nightmares with the Light. A planet, barren to the naked eye, but teeming with life itself underneath its surface. The bridge between the living and the cosmic.

Then she’d looked across the empty sands of Tatooine, beyond the dunes and the stars above, to see a figure, once dead and now alive.

_You must bring balance to the Force_ , whispered the Light within.

“I can’t…” Rey sobs now, curling her knees to her chest as she sinks onto the cold floor, wrapping herself around the cotton, her last piece of Ben. “I can’t take this away from them…”

_You must_ , urges the Light. _You must._

_I wish this task had never come to me_ Rey thinks bitterly as fresh tears fall from her eyes. The Force says nothing in return.

*** * ***

If anyone in the Resistance notices her red-rimmed eyes, they say nothing. Finn opens his mouth as if he might, but he decides against it and only nods once at her. How many tears does he see spilt each day, by those who wonder who they are outside of the First Order? Many, most likely.

Chewie gives her the Falcon when she says, in a small voice, that she must make a trip. Rey lingers when he hugs her, breathing in his scent. He smells fresh like Maz has forced him to wash. It’s domestic, and the hole within her almost cripples her into letting out a cry.

Rey smiles instead.

“See you around,” she says. Chewie ruffles her hair in response. Probably thinking her being cheeky, or playful, in using Han’s words.

Sitting at the controls of the Falcon is like putting on a pair of her favourite gloves, or her favourite jacket. For the past year, she has lived on Tatooine in her white robes, playing the part of peace and purpose. But on arriving at Ajan Kloss, she’d stood out too much. She’d been too much the last Jedi. 

When she found cargo pants and an ironed green shirt on the bed of her old quarters, left empty for her return and carrying ghosts of encounters the Resistance couldn’t dream of, she stripped herself bare like she’d done so many times before. She stuffed the white, dusty robes into a corner, out of her sight. 

She found she could breathe a little easier after that. 

The shirt, form-fitting and comfortable on others, was uncomfortable. She swapped it instead for the black sweater, gathering the loose hem around her thighs up to her waist and tying it at the low of her belly. 

She’d breathed out through her nose as its warmth encapsulated her.

_Finally,_ whispered a voice within. It could have been her own. Hard to tell these days.

No-one in the Resistance had seen Ben Solo wearing the jumper, nor did they know the reason for the hole in it that she’d clumsily darned with shaking fingers. Best not to risk it though, so she borrowed a grey jacket, which was like the one she had worn when she’d first met Luke Skywalker, but only in colour. The sleeves came to her wrist, and the material was soft unworn leather. New. Ready for the next generation.

Commander D’Acy had playfully saluted when Rey passed through the headquarters to get to the hangar. Poe, by contrast, stopped in his tracks when she entered. BB-8 whistled, impressed.

“You let down your hair,” he’d said, struck dumb. In her mind’s eye, Rey saw a smile full of sunshine and slightly crooked teeth. Quelling the heavy ache, she gave Poe a pat on the shoulder.

“Good to see you,” she’d said, approaching Chewie.

Now, sitting in the Falcon’s cockpit with the ship on autopilot and sitting pretty in the hyperspace lanes, Rey wonders how many planets she’s passed since setting off.

How many lives waiting to be saved. The amount of souls she’s passing by.

It’s a dark thought, so she thinks of the past instead.

She thinks of the old Jedi. Often she can feel them watching the new world through her eyes. Some days, she wakes and looks in the old sand-blasted mirror she’d found in the market, and they’re a piercing blue or an acid green before she blinks, her vision clears and they are the same brown with the same darkness she found reflected in Kylo Ren.

“Why didn’t you?” she mutters under her breath, scrunching herself up in the pilot’s chair. “Why didn’t you save him?”

She hears no answer. They prefer to watch, the old Jedi, rather than answer now.

Or perhaps they feel shame.

She’d found the coordinates for the Wellspring in one of the old Jedi texts, after much searching. The Wellspring is the calm waters where the full raging torrents of the Force, cosmic and living, began and buried in the stars of Deep Core. 

She’s going coreward, as smugglers like to say. If Finn or Rose, even Poe, knew her plan. They would have tried anything to stop her. Chewie would probably have outright banned her.

Rey sighs as she idly steers, keeping the Falcon in line.

She loves them. She hates that this is her mission.

“You could always turn back.” 

Rey blinks herself awake. Shifts slowly in her chair with a groan. Her head pounds for some reason. Or maybe it’s her neck. She’s got older since Jakku, since the war, and she wakes slowly now where once upon a time, she woke at the first sound out of place.

She’s wide awake when she realises that she has a co-pilot.

He wears the clothes of a smuggler, but there’s something off-kilter about him. His sleeves are rolled up, his hair well-combed with a crystal hanging from a long rope pendant around his neck. He carries a lightsaber on one hip, a blaster on the other. He looks like someone caught between two cultures. A smuggler who’s also a Jedi.

“Ben?”

“I don’t know. If you say I am, then I guess I am,” he replies, leaning back in the chair. His body doesn’t interact with his surroundings quite right. Surely then, a dream. 

She very much wants to stay in it. It wouldn’t be too hard in any case. All she’d have to do is not wake up. Just carry on sleeping. Finn would have his future, Rose and everyone else too. She’d have Ben. Next to her. Smiling at her, free from voices in his head and free to love her.

Distantly, one of the ship’s alarms blares.

_No,_ Rey thinks, curling her fists like a stubborn child. _No, I want to_ stay _. Don’t make me leave him._

The Falcon jolts to one side, and the co-pilot’s chair is empty.

She’s out of hyperspace and in the middle of a debris field. Beyond it lies a barren planet rumbling with unknown energy. It shines with light, pouring from the cracks of its surface.

“Ah.”

The Jedi were never good at neither logging astronomical features nor describing planets. Coordinates were enough, and the Force did the rest. It’s enough to shake the temptation from her mind.

Focusing, she looks closer at the debris field. It’s the wreck of an Empire-class dreadnought, torn apart by its own hubris before they could step one foot on the planet.

Rey tightens her grip on the controls. How like her grandfather to send soldiers to their deaths, thinking himself powerful enough to conquer a living embodiment of the Force.

Thankfully, she isn’t him. 

She is Rey from Jakku, and she’s going to save Ben Solo.

*** * ***

She enters the planet’s atmosphere with the Falcon maybe scorched, but a survivor. 

The surface is cragged and pallid, like any other ancient moon endlessly floating in orbit. Beams of light flicker like fire from giant geysers. Rey steers through them in a swift slalom, scanning the dull surface. 

The Force is here. The Force _is_ this planet. She feels it in her bones, her blood; but the ground below is so silent. 

_Rey…_ Her grip loosens a little on the controls. A hitch in her breath. It’s the same tone, the same soft motherly voice, that thought thinking nothing of her weeping. _Follow the light._

It’s the Force rather than logic or coordinates that guides her movements now. She steers the ship closer to a tall beam of light that reaches into the thick overcast sky like an outstretched hand. Her stomach lurches as she drives the Falcon into a dive, down through the geyser. The light is blinding, too much for her eyes but like Ahch-To, the thought of stopping never enters her mind.

Underneath the rock, is an abundance of life and colour. Strange green trees, covered in stranger orange flowers, surround her path. Reptilian bird-like creatures slowly flap their wings, circling the planet’s white sun.

“Rey of Jakku…” It’s that same voice, but it is outside of her body. It fills the air. Rey swallows, frozen as she just stands, watching the slow approach of a crystalline ball of light, golden and dazzling.

“For what do you come?” asks the voice.

Rey shrugs. There’s no better answer. “To save him.”

The light before her chuckles. It’s a sound which echoes in the nature surrounding them and the leaves of the trees sing as the light becomes a woman. 

She is an ethereal creature of the Light, with a featureless face, a white mask, and robes that skim the golden grass. Underneath her footsteps, flowers bloom.

“I am Serenity, one of the five Priestesses. Come.”

She leaves flowers in her wake. 

Touching her hand to her saber, reassuring herself of its presence, Rey follows on. The grass crunches under her feet. The air has the softness of a breeze, but there’s no wind on Rey’s cheek. No dust picks up around her feet.

The Priestess is silent with the hem of her robe flapping out behind her. Above, the birds squawk and call out. 

When they come to a large tree, with heavy branches that hang low to the ground, its purple leaves caressing Rey’s shoulders, the Priestess stops. Swooping her arm in a smooth arc, the trunk dissolves to show a gateway.

The Priestess moves to the side.

“We know what it is you seek, Rey of Jakku. If you wish to reach it, the world between worlds, you must not look back.”

Rey stares into the endless black before her. Not even stars to light the way.

Steeling herself, she looks at the Priestess. Around her, shadows gather. They all wear the mask of the Priestess, joy and sorrow and pain and beauty drawn into each face.

“She hesitates,” laments one.

“She knows not what to do!” cackles another, ruthless.

“It should be so simple, should it not?” asks a third, tilting her head.

“Jump, child. Jump,” whispers another, the only attempt to explain, to help.

It’s just mimics. Echoes and mockery of what she feels. They’ve shown such ways to other Jedi who have come before, without a doubt.

“All it is…” murmurs the first Priestess, gesturing towards the darkness, “is a leap of faith, Rey of Jakku.” 

Rey’s legs feel like jelly underneath her. However, she can’t stop. As one cackles again and another sighs a sigh of infinite hurt, she doesn’t look back.

Getting closer, and closer, stepping into a darkness which echoes every breath and every footstep—every movement—Rey’s eyes slowly become accustomed to the gloom. 

Before her, there’s a chasm. Ceaseless, boundless. Infinite.

Above her, far above, a pinprick of light like a single star. She can see it clearly if she squints. It’s completely unreachable. For those without faith.

“Just a leap of faith…” she whispers. She steps back, shifting her weight. She’s faced the darkness before, the inescapable darkness that everyone eventually faces. She clears her throat. “I can do this.”

She’s done it before after all. Then, there had been nothing.

Breaking into a run, she sprints forward. Blood pounds in her ears. Each breath starting to hurt.

But, her wound. Instead of aching, now… her wound… 

It sings.

She jumps.

*** * ***

_Luminous beings are we, not this crude matter._

_Train yourself to let go… of everything, you fear to lose…_

She’s landed on her shoulder. And it hurts.

_The Force is what gives a Jedi his power._

Wincing, Rey rolls onto her back. She blinks. The stars. And, crisscrossing through them, through galaxies upon galaxies, are pathways. They seem made from the Force itself.

_It surrounds us and penetrates us… It binds the galaxy together._

Rey sucks in a breath, struggling to stand.

“Ow.”

_I see your eyes. You already know the truth._

_I’m one with the Force, the Force is with me._

She’s on her feet now, limping slightly from the impact of her fall. Strands of her hair stuck to her lip. Her arm throbs as she reaches up to spit them away.

_We’ll see each other again. I believe that._

She walks, passing doors that are there wherever she looks. Voices tangle with one another, patches of history told by ghosts. Old Ben Kenobi tells a young Luke Skywalker of the Force for the first time. Another version of her, a younger version, wishes her friend well.

_The time to fight is now!_

_Show me…_

A lonely boy in a mask begs for help from a helmet scarred by fire.

_I will finish what you started._

Watching him through the door, she sees him in profile, hunched among the First Order tech of his quarters. It’s almost funny, in a way that’s bitter on her tongue, that this frightened boy was the enemy of the Resistance.

_You’re my only hope._

Leia Organa records a message for the old Jedi on Tatooine. She puts the message in a droid, a small action that would eventually create Luke Skywalker, Jedi Master.

He’d been nobody’s hope, in the end. Too regretful of his dark deed but then he’d sacrificed his life and came back to bring hope to those who needed it.

“Never the most conventional Jedi, were you, Master Luke,” Rey says under her breath.

She moves on. 

The next door is, at first, hard to make out. Darkness blurs the picture, but there’s debris. Rubble. Stone and dust and death.

The figure lying among it all is small and shrouded in white. Pale skin and limp.

Ben Solo crawls, staggers, towards her. Begs her to wake up without words, clutching her arm, touching the high of her waist, trying to get her to just move.

While she stares into the black nothing, he cradles her. Looks around helpless like she did when a child and older scavengers had beat her and stolen her haul. Begging, silently, wordlessly, for someone to come. Not to save her, but just to _help_.

No-one comes to him.

Seeing him so alone but hanging so tightly to her, makes her angry. It makes her sob. Sob and cry to such a point that her body trembles; she is crumbling, falling to her knees, her rage one solitary agonized roar.

Through her tears, she watches as Ben makes his decision.

He gives his life force for her. So effortless. It is a heavy price, to give one’s life for another. He pays it without thought for the consequence.

Selfish, selfless, beautiful man.

Her past self thinks they have time now. To love one another…

Ben falls to the floor with a sickening thought.

Any moment, he will fade from existence, into nothing but scraps of the Force present in black cotton and a false name.

_You were supposed to bring balance to the Force, not leave it in darkness!_

Rey turns. The door opposite her, a short way away, shows a fallen man who burns and a Master, close to tears.

_You were my brother Anakin. I loved you._

Her brows dip into a frown as she turns back. Ben lies, pale and sickly, among the rubble of the Sith temple. The place from where her nightmares visit her, every night. The place where the son of Organa and Solo had turned to the Light to save her. 

Rey presses her hand to the image before her. Her hand sinks into the past, rippling through time.

For a moment, as she’d kissed him, the Force was balanced. It had been, for the first time in a long time, calm.

And then, so cruelly, it was taken from her.

*** * ***

No, no, this can’t be… possible. He can’t. He just saved her; the Force would not take him from her, not so soon. What did he do? How did he save her? A million questions run through her mind.

Among the chaos of Palpatine’s temple, she cradles Ben’s head and clasps the edges of his sweater. Her heart thrums against her ribcage.

She can’t lose him. She can’t.

“You can’t save him.”

At first, Rey thinks she’s told herself the horrible truth. Like she used to do on Jakku, in dreams that she quickly urged herself to forget on waking. When she lifts her head though, she finds herself looking into her own eyes.

Her counterpart is so tired. Gaunt and pale. She wears Ben’s sweater and a grey jacket, her hair longer and falling around her shoulders. 

“Are you my future?”

Her counterpart’s mouth upticks with a dry smile.

“I’m not sure,” she says, her eyes scanning Ben’s unconscious body. She wears grief too well, like a favourite cloak. Rey feels the salt of tears on her lips.

“I can’t save him,” she bursts out, admitting it and letting it poison the air. “I’m too weak.”

The Rey in front of her (her future or her past or a choice, she doesn’t know) kneels beside Ben’s body. Her fingers run over his unscarred cheek, through his curls. Her eyes are dark with determination.

“I’ll help you,” she says firmly, with finality.

She presses her right palm to Ben’s chest. The blue glow of the Light flows from her fingertips, into Ben’s skin.

Rey’s taken back to the Death Star on Kef Bir, where she pressed her hand to Ben’s wound and saved him.

She’s weak, but the Force is thrumming through her. She lifts her hand and presses it upon hers. Her present and her past flood Ben’s body with Light.

“Please,” Rey finds herself saying, leaning forward and pressing her lips to Ben’s still warm temple. She tilts her forehead to his, cupping his cheek. “Be with me.”

Against her thigh, she feels it. A twitch. Just a twitch, of his forefinger. 

“It’s working!” She laughs in relief, looking wildly for her counterpart and grinning. “He’s… he’s--!”

Her counterpart nods. “I know.”

That’s when Rey notices. Her counterpart isn’t pale; she’s translucent. Fading softly, gently, into the ether.

Finally, her counterpart smiles. A genuine, loving smile.

“So… this was the sacrifice they wanted,” she says quietly, staring at her own fading hand. She locks eyes with Rey. “Create a new future, Rey. Please.”

With a whisper in the Force, she’s gone.

*** * ***

Barely a minute later, Ben’s eyes flutter open. He squints.

“Ben?”

“Ow.”

“Ben!” Rey throws her arms around his neck, hugging him tightly. “You’re alive, you’re really alive!”

Ben’s hand encompasses her back, stroking her gently. His breath is at the space between her neck and shoulder, and he speaks into her hair.

“You saved me.”

Rey sits up, helping Ben up to a sitting position so he faces her. Her counterpart had begged her, soberly but with a desperate edge to her voice, to create a new future. She cups the line of Ben’s face with her right, running her fingers gently over his hair.

“I’d cross oceans of time to save you, Ben Solo.”

His hand curves around her waist, pulling her closer. His forefinger gently traces the edges of her jaw, the lines of her mouth, the high of her cheek. With his thumb, he brushes away the coming tears.

“You’re safe,” he murmurs, right before he kisses her.

“We’re safe,” Rey affirms, right before she kisses him back.

*** * ***

**One year later**

The summer rain has, blissfully, decided to have a break for today. The students were delighted to be able to get out of the headquarters, at last, and play. Some are busy lifting rocks. Others are busy lifting each other. Rey encourages the latter to think perhaps about nature in the Force instead, showing them how they, if they try, can make flowers bloom.

She finds Ben in the meadow, overlooking the rest of Chandrila. 

Ajan Kloss was good enough for war, and its initial aftermath, but if the New Republic was going to be restored, the Resistance needed somewhere more central, with more diversity. Chandrila seemed a natural choice.

Ben’s deep in thought when Rey comes to sit beside him. The sun shines on his face and threads through his soft hair, creating a kind of golden glow around him. He looks free. He’s still intense and sometimes struggles to fit in with the more buoyant atmosphere of the Restoration Alliance (Lando’s idea, that name) but he knows now, the benefits of telling someone. In the beginning, he would wander off and not come back for hours. One time, he thoughtlessly shut the bond between them. 

Now, he always makes sure to tell her when he needed a break. That, or he invites her along.

“So, I managed to stop Milla from lifting Jado five feet in the air just now.”

“Flower trick?”

“Nature is always more fascinating than tricks,” Rey replies. She feels Ben smile as he kisses her hair. He winds his arm around her waist at the same time. The fact his hand covers almost the entirety of her waist never fails to stir a faint feeling of arousal within her. She kisses his temple, letting her lips linger on his skin.

Her fingers trail down his cheek, his neck and slide underneath his tunic, tracing the line of his collarbone as they kiss. His kiss warms her, but the feel of his other hand sliding into her hair warms her further.

“The students could find us,” Ben mumbles against her lips. She shushes him.

“Don’t ruin the moment,” she says, kissing him for the second, third time.

“Think of the scandal.”

Rey pulls back, eyeballing him. The corner of her mouth curls up in a smile. “I hate you.”

“You’ll hate me more when I tell you what offer Poe made me this morning.” 

“An offer?” She tries to disguise the apprehension in her voice, but she fails. “Really?”

“I already said no, but he offered me the chance to be a Senator. I think he thought it would please my mother.” Rey wraps an arm around the breadth of his shoulders in silent reply. Ben touches his forehead to hers before he sighs, running his fingers through his hair. He peers up at the warm Chandrila sun. “I’m not suited for politics like she was. I did suggest Finn, but he’s busy overseeing the trooper deprogramming with Jannah.”

“Poe probably thought he was being helpful.” She links her fingers with Ben’s. 

Turns out, Ben is an excellent teacher. Kids have come from everywhere, from Canto Bight (Rose had been delighted to meet the boys and girls of the stables, and Finn had had to stop her from going to Canto Bight and delivering a sound hiding to their guardian) and even Jakku, after the call was put out. 

It was one of the first things they both wanted to do, after the war, when everything was more settled. Set up an academy and teach children about the Force. They both wanted to put the ancient texts and artefacts away. The Force was never about the Jedi and the Sith. It was about balance, and that was what needed to be taught to the future generations.

Now, with Finn and Rose getting closer to marriage, and Jannah working in the Alliance and dating Kaydel, their dream feels closer than ever.

“You know,” Ben starts, picking up the thread of her thoughts, “we still need to settle on a place to set up the academy. Soon there won’t be enough room for kids still coming to us for help.”

“Hm. The Wellspring?” Rey grins as Ben snorts a laugh.

“If you want to really scare them, head for Ossus.”

“You’re right. Yavin 4? That’s always been more of a military base though,” Rey adds, shifting so she can lay her head in Ben’s lap. He smiles down at her. His long fingers thread through her hair, idly combing it. She’s left it down since Exegol. To her, to have it free feels like freedom. (However many times she gets hairs stuck on her lip while training with Ben.) 

Neither of them, too, wear the traditional robes of the Jedi. She’s thrown away her white robes. Stolen his black sweater and paired it with a pair of dark grey leggings. Ben seems to have an array of black sweaters, so he didn’t miss one with a hole fixed by slightly clumsy darning – which he’d done himself, as a surprise for her one day. She still loves remembering the shy way in which he presented his work to her.

“We could try…” His brown eyes rake in her settled pose across his lap and his smile widens. “Naboo?”

Rey narrows her eyes, looking properly at him.

“Naboo?”

“It’ll have the room for what we want. Parents can stay with their children while they learn—"

“It sounds perfect,” Rey murmurs, and she feels his lips on her cheek. She tilts her chin up, catching his mouth. He freezes for a moment, surprised, but it only lasts a second before his hands are on her waist. As Ben lifts her into his lap, Rey loops her arms around the width of his shoulders. They exchange lazy kisses, promises of their future, as Chandrila's sun shines overhead.


End file.
